2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Non-human Animals and a New Ethics for Engineering
Presented at Engineering Ethics Division (ETHICS) Technical Session _ Monday June 26, 1:30 - 3:00
The sixth mass extinction is underway. Earth's animal populations have declined by an average of 69% since 1970, partly due to unsustainable use of land, water, and energy, and resulting climate change. This paper submits that engineering education has a critical role to play in helping prepare the next generation of engineers to address this ecological urgency. However, to this will require a new framework of ethics for engineering; one that must first dismantle the nature-technology distinction, and the perceived separation of humans and other animals, which are at the foundation of engineering design and practice. Indeed, non-human animals have long been disregarded and devalued under the rationalist worldview that persists in the culture of engineering. By disconnecting our identity from Earth’s non-human others, essentially treating them as technologies for our use, we human have put not just other animals, but also ourselves at risk. The author offers suggestions for how engineering ethics education might begin to incorporate and address such concerns.
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Dr. Rosalyn W. Berne University of Virginia [biography]
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